Caravan Palace

Here we go, let’s take the Caravan for another tour. Same Palace, with a brand new customized flavor. The surprise breakout band of the last decade, the apostles of Electro Swing and precursors of a laidback yet terribly upbeat trend, is coming up with an evocative second album: Panic! This time, Caravan Palace takes us even farther than their first album (that sold more than 150 000 copies) and continues an amazing adventure almost started by accident.

They start touring long before they even think about releasing an album. And everything clicks in 2007, during the Django Reinhardt Festival in Samois. Terrified to be part of the gypsy jazz pantheon, they gather speed and steam and create a real posse (not unlike hip-hop) that follows them everywhere. The word is out, their breakout song, Jolie Coquine, is playing everywhere. The record is released a year later, and it’s an immediate hit. They soon tour France and Europe. The show peaks at the Olympia. The room is packed, people go crazy… listening to swing. 

But during the autumn of 2010, they stop and take a month off to start thinking about the new album. The basic rhythm of the first album has mutated into sophisticated beats, less gimmicky, more varied and enriched with sounds flirting with the frontiers of trip-hop. They still love Massive Attack, they still dig the creative minds of Ninja Tune, Isolée’s minimal electro vibe or Gorillaz’s grand hip-hop rock bazaar. But they also rediscover thirties and forties swing jazz, artists like Fletcher Henderson, or the less mainstream musicians like Charlie Chavers and Mildred Bailey. Fourteen titles are soon emerging. The petulant voice of Colotis is booming again and the old friend Cyrille-Aimée is back on two songs. And don’t forget to include Toustou in the Caravan.